Author: Jeff

I was sure that I had never read Lydia Davis’ Almost No Memory before. But aspects of one of the stories seemed familiar. There was a couple working as caretakers for a house in the countryside. The money from that job and the money they earned from other unspecified work was barely keeping them fed. They felt distracted, unattached to everybody around them. (At the table next to me, a pair of men passed a copy of The Little Prince back and forth between them. One described the dimensions of the copy he’d had as a child, while the other was concerned about how closely the illustration colors matched the older editions. The book ended up on the table between them, never opened. The one guy started reading another book, the other wrote on a pad of paper. The title that he wrote at the top of his page was “Poop”.) When an onion pie surfaced in the story, I realized that the same onion pie and the same cabin fever had played a part in Paul Auster’s memoir, Hand to Mouth. Auster is Davis’ ex-husband. The two of them had written quite different stories about the same incident. The climax of that part of Auster’s book centers around the onion pie. The impact of the story is concentrated there, like a punchline. In Davis’ story the onion pie is the halfway point, there are two more seasons to get through in that house, and the tone is spread thinly across the whole story.

Pekar/Crumb, American Splendor #9

Harvey Pekar, everyman/oddball-cartoonist of some renown, and his family are blogging.

Photo Friday – Broken

With her left hand, she holds open a thick mass-market paperback. She is reading the last few paragraphs of the book. Everything, it seems, is wrapping up nicely – no loose ends. Without looking up from the book, she takes a long drag from the cigarette that she holds in her right hand. The ash perched precariously at the tip of the cigarette is as long as the unsmoked portion of the cigarette. When she finishes her drag, she exhales and feels around in front of her with her smoking hand. She locates the handlebars of her scooter and triggers the accelerator, gliding forward a few feet and then slowing to a stop when she retracts her hand from the scooter to have another puff. If she can keep the steering relatively straight, she can stay the course. She’ll finish the book before the sidewalk narrows, just beyond the end of the college building.

The Seattle Pfhotologgers Guild met yesterday to forage for pictures in Ballard.
Attending: Manuel,
Jerry,
tyd,
John,
Kathleen,
Samantha,
Oscar
Some of the photos posted by the others: buffoonery.org, Samantha, Jerry Kindall, Bongo, thenyoudiscover.com, Flipdingo.

A young guy strolled over and stopped me as I was walking up Harbor Steps tonight. He wore an oversized policeman-style cap. He carried a clipboard. “Excuse me. Are you an artist, a writer, or a poet?”

His inflection was internally conflicted, and it wasn’t apparent if it was a yes or no question or if he was giving me three options – artist, writer, or poet.

I answered, “No.”

” . . . a reggae musicfan?”

That cryptic pronunciation again: “. . . a reggae-music fan?” “A reggae music fan?” Admittedly, the distinction was less important this time.

“No.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

I crossed the street. There was a guitar player and a drummer sitting in the lobby of the Art Museum, their backs to the window. They had no audience. It was just them and a family of camel statues.

Language from a bank document:

“Any references in this agreement to gender include masculine, feminine, and neuter. Unless otherwise indicated by the context any singular references include the plural and any plural references include the singular.”

In other words: By they, we may mean he, and by he, we may mean she. And that goes double for you.

I’m out on the roof of an apartment building in Belltown, sitting around a table crowded with paper plates, ketchup bottles, and strangers. We’re eating barbecued burgers. We’re losing sunlight, and the dark clouds are getting more ominous. I refrain from pointing out that it’s probably going to start raining any minute.

A family is eating their barbecued meal in the little room that opens out onto the roof, fifty yards away. Whenever one of us crosses paths with them, one of the men in that group gives us a verbal poke in the ribs: “You can leave the beer on the counter over there. I’ll watch it for you.” or “You said you’d do our dishes, right?” The Mariners game is playing out on a big plasma screen TV that we can see through a window. Look away from the TV, and you can make out part of the giant scoreboard screen shining through the framework of the stadium across town. Occasionally the wind will carry the bass of the stadium sound system all the way over to us. Then the distinct voice of Björk drifts up from the waterfront. I’m convinced that I can tell which song she’s singing each time a new one is started. The lyrics are at the back of my head, but I can’t quite connect. Late in the evening, the squeal of a train braking on the tracks seems to compliment Björk’s howlings perfectly. (Wait. Is that a train or is it part of the music?) It doesn’t rain.

The lights in the parking lot outside my picture window brighten the window shade into an even flat glow. A movie I’ve seen a dozen times ends, and my eyes are drawn to the shadow of a cat which suddenly appears in my corner of the window. The shadow turns so that it’s in profile now, and it paces the length of the window, tail pointing up behind it. The shadow stops at the other end, hangs out there for a moment and then turns around to retrace its steps and wander away.